The Drowning Prevention Strategy’s main focuses are on reducing death and injury due to drowning, and ensuring people continue to safely enjoy New Zealand’s unique water environments. ACC is the lead government agency of the Strategy, and serves as the link between Government, the water safety sector, the Minister for ACC and the New Zealand Injury Prevention Strategy (NZIPS) Secretariat.
Drowning in New Zealand
Drowning is the third highest cause of unintentional death in New Zealand, with an average of 123 fatalities occurring each year. Although efforts of the water safety sector have halved the rate of drowning in the past 20 years, the fatality rate remains high.
For information about how you can prevent drowning, see the following pages in the At home section:
Implementation
The Drowning Prevention Strategy (DPS) is broken into three broad implementation phases. This section explains the implementation phases and links to current activities.
Research
This page links to downloadable copies of water safety research commissioned by ACC.
Download the Strategy and Implementation Plan
To read the Strategy, download:
- ACC2215 Drowning Prevention Strategy: Towards a water safe New Zealand 2005-2015 – colour version (PDF 874K)
- ACC2215 Drowning Prevention Strategy: Towards a water safe New Zealand 2005-2015 – black and white version (PDF 841K).
To read about how the Strategy is being implemented, download ACC4116 Drowning Prevention Strategy: Implementation plan 2007-2011 (PDF 2.8M).
Contact us
For more information, contact us at drowningstrategy@acc.co.nz
Last updated: 20 April 2009